


Am I Protecting Her or Myself From You or Us?

by Riddlez



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dry Humping, Dry Orgasm, F/M, Frottage, How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Character Death, One-Sided Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, creepy simon, grace is doing her best okay, sorry simon me boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26369755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riddlez/pseuds/Riddlez
Summary: In which Grace is cautious of Simon's new attitude and will do anything to protect Hazel for a little while longer
Relationships: Simon Laurent/Grace Monroe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	Am I Protecting Her or Myself From You or Us?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this is my first fic, I really love the way the complicated feelings Grace has for Simon and vice versa (minus Simon's most likely unrequited crush). I just like writing people dealing with their very deep rooted issues with smut okay

After Tuba’s funeral, Hazel and Grace just took a moment to take in the the sites of the forest, the lush trees, the mixed sounds of the nearby campers chit-chat nearby mixed with birds chirping and the crisp, cool wind carrying leaves and petals of flowers through the air and dancing around them. Grace tries to take a snapshot of this memory, taking in the grief of losing an almost-friend, the view was expansive and vast and almost intimidating from up there but she knows there are no real threats here, just the easygoing characters of the car. Grace sniffles and takes a big breath. Tuba really would’ve liked it here. 

As they climb down the tree, the chilly air of the campfire car causes Grace to see the gooseflesh rise on her upper arms and calves. As they finally make it to the soft but firm dirt ground, she inspects Hazel carefully, taking in puffy bloodshot eyes and tussled, knotted blond hair but still smooth baby skin.

“You aren’t cold, Hazel?” Genuine concern lacing her voice, regarding Hazels lack of socks or shoes. 

Hazel shakes her head, blond nest expanding “Nu-uh, Grace I feel fine! If anything I’m just tiiiired” she groans and sways, as if ready to pass out then and there. Grace puts on a soft smile and takes her smaller hand in hers. Of course she is, they had spent most of the night looking for the perfect spot and the early morning was taken up by the funeral. No wonder, the poor girl must be exhausted. 

“Okay Hazel, I’ll talk to Simon and see if we can rest here for a bit before seeing the Apex.” Hazel nods and gives her a littles less than certain smile, eyes shining with gratitude. Grace tries to ignore the little falter on her face when she mentions Simon. “You’re going to need to be at your peak Hazel-ness before meeting them, they’ll love you!”

Hazel giggles, “Really? they will?” Grace’s smile morphs into a reassuring grin “For sure Hazel! I know Lucy would love to have a friend like you” The part about her being a denizen goes unsaid but Hazel’s smile at the thought of acceptance both soothes and breaks her heart.

All chatter seizes when they approach Simon by the exit, his scowl deepens and Grace doesn’t realize how tight her hold is on Hazel’s hand until she hears a slight whimper from her side, she shoots her an apologetic look and Hazel nods to reassure her.

If Simon saw their little exchange he didn’t make it known, his eyes darkening as he seemingly stalks towards them. His smile is sarcastic and just devoid of any emotion resembling empathy or comfort.

“Done? Great! It doesn't matter, the Apex aren’t in the next car anymore, moved at least three ahead somehow.” His tone is snappy and drips bitterness towards the end. Grace tries to write it off as sleep deprivation, much like the sharp look she sees Hazel giving him out of the corner of her eye. Grace takes this as her cue to step in.

“Well Si, we’re certainly not going to reach them like this,” She gestures from Simon to Hazel and pulls a face that shows some of her own exhaustion finally leaking through, “We need to rest.” Her voice is firm, giving of the impression that it was more of a command than a suggestion. Grace takes no joy in pulling rank, she’s always regarded Simon as her equal, she was simply better at people and leading and he was more at planning and their arrangement had always worked out to be best for their dynamic in their eyes.

Simon’s facade falters a bit before reverting back into a less nasty face, Grace muses that perhaps his own exhaustion is starting to seep in and make itself known.

He lets out a long sigh, “Ugggghh, okay, fine. But we’ll need to set up camp somewhere” His eyes narrow and his lips curl up in a mischievous way she should be familiar with but is instead kind of shaken by, had that look always been so…sinister? creepy? 

He lets out a low chuckle “Hope some of these campers wouldn’t mind us ‘borrowing’ some of their stuff” he moves closer to grip her free hand and bends down to whisper “what do you say, Grace, Hazel’s got to learn what we do sometime, I think this’ll be good for her.”

Grace shuddered. She doesn’t shudder. She NEVER shudders or shows fear. Not when she was face to face with a gohm, not when her parents yelled at her for trying to get their attention and not when she had first met the true conductor. The latter was just from pure awe, that’s it. She was just frozen in her amazement. But that voice, that look, she had never seen worn once on the face of her best friend of eight years, she’s just surprised is all, she hopes the resurfacing of goose pimples on her skin arrived at the same conclusion.

She also knows Simon saw that shudder, she thinks she sees a smirk flash across his face before he moves away regards her with a raised eyebrow. She needs to focus on what's important. 

“Heeeey! Grace, over here! I think someone just left their stuff behind and we can use it!” Hazel let go of her hand and practically launched herself over to a used campsite with one tent with a and a single sleeping bag with a spare blanket.

As Grace lets out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding in the first place, she clasps her hands together and smiles with all the practiced enthusiasm her old dance teachers would use on the rare occasion when her parents would check on her progress before a recital, “Good job Hazel, we can rest here for a little!” 

It’s worth it to see Hazel beam up at her before almost comically falling face first onto the sleeping bag. Well, that settles where she’s sleeping. 

She can hear Simon let out a grunt of annoyance, “Um, Hazel, incase you haven’t noticed there are three of us and TWO places for sleep, we need more-“

“Simon, it’s okay, I don’t mind sleeping next to Hazel, it looks like you can take the tent” She rushes toward Hazel and drops down before he could cause the child anyMORE emotional damage that she’ll no doubt have to soothe. 

“But Grace-“ “It’s okay Simon, you and Grace can share the tent” Wide and innocent brown eyes peer between the two Apex leaders as one looks back somewhat mollified and the other in confusion.

Grace touches her shoulder cautiously, “Ehrm, what?” 

Hazel fiddles to get in a sitting position before pulling Grace in by the hem of one of her shirt sleeves and whispering, “I don’t know if I’ll go turtle again, I’d feel safer if Simon was away from me with someone to hold him back.” 

Grace tries not to let any hurt seep into her voice, “Hazel, would you really feel safe sleeping away from me?” 

She buries her face into Grace's shoulder, “If Simon sees you with me like that he’ll hurt you too, won’t he?” Grace weaves her fingers into Hazel’s blonde nest and lets out a sigh

“If it’ll make you feel safer, okay. I won’t let him touch a hair on your head.”

Hazel nuzzles into her shoulder a little before letting go and falling back into the sleeping bag. Grace gets up and walks over to Simon who regards her with suspicion in return.

“Well kid’s asleep, you should probably rest up too, I’ll keep watch.” As he pushes past her to find a spot to keep watch and no doubt possibly harass denizens, panic floods in the pit of her stomach as she grasps his arm and uses a tactic that she knows always works. 

Pouting her lips slightly and batting her eyelashes, she tilts her head up right next to his ear and in a low voice says, “Si, you should rest too, look around, there are no threats here, we should rest.” She considers her next words carefully, “Besides, when was the last time we shared a tent together? I think we have some catching up to do.”

She can see the apples of his cheeks turn pink at her words as he grunts and nods. Oh yeah, she knew about his crush on her. She could write her own book about all the instances where she’s witnessed it and used it to her advantage. A part of her always felt guilty for the latter but she needed something to keep him in line when over-abusing denizens in front of the younger Apex kids or trying to get him to help look after them like she did. 

She doesn’t dare contemplate her own feelings though. Simon is first and foremost her best friend, her supposed sole confidant, her right hand man and she can’t just muck that up with messy and unpredictable romance! She knew what crushes blossom into when given too much attention, like, what if he wanted *biological* kids or to get really serious, would they honeymoon on the train!? How would they explain it to the Apex!

When Simon enters the tent, she takes a breath to ground herself and glances over to Hazel; still snug in her sleeping bag, she can make out her little chest rising and falling in a steady motion and most importantly, no turtle features.

Grace enters the tent and leans against one of the walls next to Simon. Surprisingly, in a rare show of initiating intimate boldness, he puts a hand on her leg, resting calloused fingers just above the bend of her knee. 

“Y’know Grace, you don’t always have to play mommy with these kids, they have to grow up sometime” Grace lets out a halfhearted scoff,

“Simon they’re kids, you know I just let them do their own thing after they hit thirteen, but when they’re that young they need someone to nurture them, it’s not my fault I’m the de facto matriarch of the group.” Simon lets out a ‘hmph’ before they settle into a comfortable silence.   
Okay, maybe she does play mother, there’s a part of her deep down that feels, that KNOWS it was no coincidence these kids were sent her way. She connected their names with faces with so many heartbreaking stories of abandonment, abuse, neglect and remembers code A-17 is in place for a good reason. 

She remembers when Lucy, one of their youngest that had first come along at age 6, taught her to read past the kindergarten level, to purge, use a harpoon pack and live with a poked out eye. She also remembers the day of her first raid, the slightly splintered baseball bat she was offered and how Lucy had chirped ‘I got this for you, mommy!’ It brings a smile to her face, how embarrassed Lucy got, tripping and stammering over her words, Grace recalls having done something similar to one of her (many) babysitters once.

Simon seems to be keen on staying awake, she lulls her head onto his shoulder and can feel his skin heat up. He then clears his throat and makes a grab for her arm,

“Grace, I need to know your number.” What. “Simon, what’s bringing this on?”

“I need to know so when we get back-“ She feels herself starting to boil with annoyance.

“There’s no rush, and besides we have time before we reach the Apex.” She needs to turn up the charm a bit. She scoots so close to him that sides are practically flushed together, moving her hands to his chest and shoulders she purrs, “We don’t really get time like this to ourselves anymore.”

She can hear Simon gulp as he leans down to snake his hands around her waist, half pulling her into his lap. 

“Grace…” He trails lowly into her ear. “Did you know why I’ve been wanting you to read the Esmoroth trilogy so badly?” She knows why, if you can believe it, she’s actually read it. She knows of Sir Simon and the runaway princess Poise (as she quickly figured out a synonym for her own name) who dared defy the king and queen of the land and run off together to set the world free of the evil emperor Uno. She also knows of some slightly nsfw scenes between the two leads and the super flowery language similar to what one of the Apex teens would describe to her as “self-insert fanfiction.” 

But Simon can’t know that.

So she tilts her head up and in a breathy voice beckons him to answer, “Why Simon?” There’s a part of her that hopes he won’t go through with it, but even in the low light of the tent she can see his blush expanding on his skin. 

“It’s kind of my confession to you. There’s these two leads that leave the world they were wasted in and go somewhere they’d be respected, they embark on the adventure of a lifetime trying to save the world and realize they complete one another” Grace feels her heart pick up it’s pace. Simon shuffles them into a position where he’s on his hands and knees, a leg is slotted in between hers and there are two hands on either side of her waist. His teeth are basically grazing her ear when he says, “We complete each other, Grace”

Without giving her a second to react he dives in and captures her lips, it’s raw passion and full of dizzying emotions that could be super platonic to not-platonic. He’s moving his lips against her and starts to suckle on her bottom lip. She considers pulling him off so they can talk about this properly but pauses when she sees Hazel’s sleeping form. She can’t risk him storming out, playing along is her safest option right now. So she wraps her arms around his shoulders and moans into his mouth, which he swallows eagerly also using the spare moment to enter his tongue into her mouth and seek out her own. Soon enough, their tongues are battling for dominance and in the heat of the moment Simon moves his other leg in between Grace’s own. In the middle of this action, his knee unknowingly brushes a certain spot in between her legs while trying to accommodate his larger figure. He smirks when she shudders out a breathy moan.

“Oh? What's this Grace? Did I find something you like?” His voice was dripping with an arrogance that ignited both lust and annoyance in her. She really doesn’t want to have sex or anything resembling sex a few feet away from a child whom her sexual partner would possibly murder like he killed her mother-figure. 

He notices the panic on her face and brings one of his hands up to cup her jaw. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Oh god he’s already trying out pet names. If he catches a whiff of anything wrong it’ll be disastrous, she needs to play it cool.

“We can’t possibly do this like seven feet away from Hazel!” she whisper-yells. He hums and looks her over, cunning written all over his face, “I suppose we can’t, but we can do other things.” She falters slightly and he notices again his tone pointed, “Grace we’ve been waiting for each other for how many years, and you’re still scared of our love?” Grace is officially more frustrated than horny at this point. She wasn’t scared of anything! She just doesn’t know how she feels yet. She knew Simon is special to her, a lifelong companion, but romantically? She needs more time she doesn’t have for that.

Grace tries the timid route, although out of character, it should require the least amount of talking. She shakes her head in an exasperated way and swiftly takes off his hair tie to card her fingers through the tangled golden mess. her voice is thick when she says, “Of course I want you, but there’s more we need to focus on right now.”

Simon seems pacified by that answer, “Wow I’d never thought I’d see Grace Monroe so… submissive” he lets out a low chuckle. Grace curses at him in her head, of course he has to be a Grace expert right now. He furrows his brows and makes a scrutinizing face, “It’s so unlike you that I have to wonder if there’s something else going on...” 

Grace can tell if this is playful or dangerous, She peaks behind him to see Hazel still asleep. Good. 

Or what she assumes is asleep inside a shell. Not good. 

Emergency panic mode engaged. Protect Hazel at all costs.

Grace surges forward and pulls him in close to claim his lips, he moans and a fight for dominance begins. she grabs his wrists and flips them over so she’s straddling him, when their lips part, she’s trailing kisses down his neck and tugs the hem of his hoodie, hoping he’ll get the message. 

Simon didn’t think his teasing would work out so well for him, but all is right in the world again. He feared Grace was drifting away from him for that silly null-loving child. How foolish of him to doubt his Grace’s loyalty to him when her faith in him certainly hadn’t faltered in the slightest. He separates from her to yank the hoodie off and he then holds her upper arms to slide off those wretched gloves that hide her beautiful number, only complimented by his and his alone.

Grace lets him slide them off and aims for a bigger distraction. She untucks her shirt, slowly at first and playing with the hem to get him to keep his focus off of her number. She sees his eyes darken as he registers what it signifies. 

She forces her best ditzy giggle as she earns a groan by rocking herself against his groin, “I’m waiting, babe.”

Against the soft green glow of their numbers in the tent, Grace can still see how flustered and slightly disheveled Simon is. After a pause he grips the bottom of the shirt and yanks it straight up to reveal Grace’s purple padded sports bra clad breasts. Simon starts to get to work on kissing, sucking, nipping on all the exposed skin his lips and teeth could find. Grace calls his name like a broken record in between breathy moans.

Simon’s uttering things against her skin that Grace doesn’t think he knows he’s saying out loud “There’s my Grace, wanted you for so lonnnngh…mphff…Dreamed about this since we were fourteen…mphff…you’re perfect…everythinmmghh.” Grace feels the heat rising in her skin and something deep within her is set ablaze. .

Simon captures her lips again in a kiss that is nothing but pure desperation, when he separates he rests his forehead against hers, his eyes piercing into hers. “For you, I would do it again, y’know.” he breathes against her lips. She closes her eyes and hums in question. He chuckles way to lightheartedly for the response he gives, “I would kill a million nulls for you if it gets me into your arms.”

Grace snaps her eyes open. He’s looking at her with something so raw and powerful and indescribable and she considers that this ‘crush’ was too shallow a label for what this was, it went a lot deeper than she expected and almost feels guilty for a second. No. Protect Hazel comes first. She feels a hint of disgust at herself for pecking him on the lips for that line, hoping it’ll shut him up. She feels a burning rage when she moves in for his belt and undoes it along with his fly and zip to reveal his boxer-clad erection so that he’ll just STOP. 

When he starts slivering his fingers into the waist of her pants she swats his hands away and clarifies, “Slow down there, I don’t think we should go that far yet.” His annoyance crosses into arousal again as she’s rocking against him trying to find a position where she can stimulate her clit.

Simon holds her waist and tries to match her rhythm, when he’s rolling his hips he finds the motion that has Grace tossing her head back and whimpering his name. He smirks and then grins at a new revelation.

“Mmmnn, Grace your number” he moans after bucking his hips up in a way that made her see stars. She looks at her arm through her hazy, lust-filled gaze to see her number go up again ever so slightly. She can hardly think like this.

“See my love, you know deep down this is right, us together is right and it always has been and will be” he’s mumbling into her cheek. She grips him tighter as stars are spinning in her vision. She can tell they're both starting to get close from Simon’s increasingly erratic movements.

With their arms wound tightly around sweaty bodies, legs intertwined and breaths intermingling, She cums first, dry only with some leaking through her panties and fireworks go off behind her eyelids. Simon gives one last buck of his hips and cums through his underwear, wiping any excess off on the corner of the blanket. they lazily put any discarded clothes back on and collapse on the dirt floor together. 

As exhaustion finally comes to claim Grace she tugs the good half of the blanket over them and holds Simon down, half-laying on top of him. whether she’s pinning him down to stop him or keeping him as an anchor, she doesn’t know anymore.

It isn’t until he kisses her forehead and closes his eyes does she fall asleep too.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! (if it's considered enjoyable, idk man) 
> 
> Please let me know if you have any Grimon/Mall Rats fic ideas, I would love to hear them!


End file.
